Connecticut families, please send emails to your state Representatives and Senators asking them to oppose special education bills HB 7277 and SB 1561, which are identical.
If you do not know who your Representative or Senator is, click here to find out!
(If you are interested, a link to HB 7277, all 63 pages of it, is here.)
Do you need an example of what to say? Below is what I sent to my representative, Jillian Gilchrest.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Diane Willcutts
(add address, phone number, and email address)
April 23, 2025
Re: Please oppose Special Education Bills HB 7277 and SB 1561
Dear Representative Gilchrest:
I am a resident of West Hartford and a parent of a child with disabilities. I appreciate all the good work you do. As you may know, there are two bills in front of the Select Committee on Special Education that have sparked controversy, as they include provisions that are devastating to children with disabilities and their families. I attended most of the 13-hour public hearing on Monday and provided 6 pages of detailed written testimony (attached). If these bills reach the floor of the House, I hope that you will oppose them if the following sections remain unchanged:
Sections 1-7 (which rushes to cap tuition for approved private special education schools, RESCs, etc.) This was probably the most controversial issue at the hearing. (My attached testimony explains more.) Bottom line: why not create an ad hoc committee to carefully study the tuition costs and provision of special education services among private placements PRIOR to implementing caps? It is important to include multiple stakeholders and not just do this through OPM and CSDE. Rushing this process and implementing “universal” tuition caps as described in these bills is likely to cause chaos and lasting damage to students.
Sections 41-43 (which serves to punish parents who have unilaterally placed their children in private schools–by making hearings even more burdensome for those families). I included my analysis of burden of proof on Page 2, Section E of my detailed testimony. It seems a few districts are concerned about massive costs associated with losingdue process hearings (in a system that is stacked against parents). Districts lose hearings when they have committed gross violations of students’ legal and civil rights. It is appalling that those districts are using public dollars to fight families, rather than providing our kids with needed services and programming. I explain additional concerns in my detailed testimony.
Section 44 (removing short-term objectives and “implementer” from a child’s Individualized Education Plan– IEP). Both removals would be problematic, but not listing the “implementer” in the IEP could be devastating. Removing this column from the IEP would give districts free rein to provide special education services with whomever is available. I.e., families would have no idea whether services were being provided by a special education teacher, paraprofessional, music teacher, etc. The implementer for special education services has always been and should continue to be a PPT decision and not unilaterally determined by districts. Our children and families deserve school district accountability and transparency.
More information is in my detailed testimony. I welcome the opportunity to speak with you, your staff, or anyone who may be interested in more information.
Sincerely,
Diane Willcutts
______________________________________________________________________________________
WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO? If you have not already submitted testimony on these bills, please do so ASAP. Click here. Note that the hearing date was 4/21/2025. And you will need to actually select which bill/bills you are opposing. (They pop up, but until you click on one or both, you will not be able to submit anything.)
